Relatively Few

by Editor
October 7, 2014 at 12:22 pm

https://www.smartertimes.com/1295/relatively-few

"Health Plan Cancellations Are Coming, but for Relatively Few" is the headline over an article on page A3 of my print New York Times. It is labeled "The Upshot" but otherwise carries no indication of whether it is news, opinion, or something else. The article begins as follows:

People are starting to get letters telling them their health insurance plans have been canceled because of the Affordable Care Act. Because the letters will go out just before the midterm congressional elections, they are likely to get a lot of attention. There have been severalstoriesthis past week. But the people affected will represent only a small fraction of the population with health insurance.

The cancellations are occurring at the state level, and some insurance regulators don't require any reporting, so a precise head count is difficult. But it appears that as many as several hundred thousand people will find their plans canceled this year. That sounds like a lot of people, but to put it in context: The total number of Americans with health insurance is more than 276 million, according to a recent government survey. The individual insurance market contains about 20 million people, according to estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation that will be published later this month.

If you can't see the bias here, imagine the Times applying the same standard to other areas of news coverage. For example, the General Motors fatalities related to recalled vehicles. The Times headlined one article on that issue, "13 Deaths, Untold Heartache, From G.M. Defect." If the Times covered GM the way it covered ObamaCare, the headline would have been "G.M. Defect Causes Relatively Few Deaths," and the news article would have gone on to emphasize how GM has tens of millions of vehicles on the road that haven't caused any deaths, and that the death-causing GM vehicles "represent only a small fraction" of the total fleet. Or imagine if the Times coverage of the eight insider trading convictions at SAC Capital had been headlined "Insider Trading Convictions, but for Relatively Few," emphasizing that those convicted "represent only a small fraction" of those who worked at the hedge fund.

A cynic might draw the conclusion that the Times is hostile to corporate America (GM) and the financial industry (SAC Capital), and totally in the tank for President Obama and his health care law (ObamaCare). But "to put it in context," the biased headlines represent only a small fraction of the total headlines that the newspaper publishes.

Speaking just as one reader, I'd prefer that the Times just deliver me straight the news that "several hundred thousand people" will find their health plans canceled, and let me decide for myself whether that is "relatively few" or not.